We were lucky to catch up with Emine Avanessian recently and have shared our conversation below.

Emine, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you ever had an amazing boss? What did you learn from them? Maybe you can share a story that illustrates the kind of boss they were or maybe you can share your thoughts on what you think made them an awesome person to work for?

The biggest influence on my life and the first person I ever worked for was Johanna Went. She is an incredible performance artist who was legendary in the 80’s punk scene in Los Angeles, but that’s not the context I met her in and I didn’t learn this till later.

In the 90’s she had a beautiful line of silk screened pillows that my mom’s tiny garment company sewed, and she’d always come by to drop off silk fabrics, wearing her skull scarf and just being so cool. After hanging around a lot and talking to her, she offered me a job helping her silkscreen and tidy up around her studio down the street, which was just pure magic.

Her studio was in a gorgeous storybook building built in 1922 on Beverly Blvd, called “The Cottage”. It was incredible, like something out of Hansel and Gretel, and just down the street from where I grew up, in a neighborhood that did not look like a fairytale. Seeing this kind of visual environment, this surreal nook with different types of creative people, all living and working in these units was deeply inspiring. I learned about her career as an artist, and all of her creative endeavors working there.

But even outside of working in her studio, as we got close she included me in so much. Her home was like a museum and the alligator in the living room was stunning, but when she invited me to be in a few of her performance art pieces, it was mesmerizing. She handmade all the costumes, and once I wore a paper mache baby head that looked like a globe with a full map of the world attached, then another time I was a in a giant silk vagina costume the size of my entire body. No one else I knew was experiencing anything like this and it was not something I took lightly.

Everything she taught me, all the places she invited me to and everything she included me in are still things I use and think about constantly. Seeing this caliber of woman in the circles she moved in, running a creative business by herself, while completely being herself with zero pretentiousness or concern of what anyone thought shifted my brain. That’s it. That is how you do it, and that is what I’m doing. It’s not that I understood being an entrepreneur or running a small business, she just made doing what you want to do seem like the only thing to do.

Emine, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was between jobs and looking for something creative to do, when one night in 2010 I was walking around my neighborhood and saw this miniature store front around the corner from Beverly Blvd., in a beautiful building with a sign that said: “100ft.²? FOR RENT!“

I had just taken my first trip to Japan in the summer of 2009, and so many of the places I’d planned to visit were unexpectedly so small and so well curated, it was deeply inspiring. I immediately went home and told my partner Nathan Cabrera (who is a brilliant designer and artist) that I have so many resources and we’re both so creative, why not open a tiny store like the ones in Tokyo, that seemed impossible to do in Los Angeles. I was excited to reach out to a lot of indie artists and small companies, plus I knew that all Nathan would have to do is look at the space one time, and he would come up with the perfect layout – and that’s exactly what happened.

It didn’t feel daunting working within the tiny space, not only because I knew I could be a staff of one to start, but because how expensive could it be to curate such a tiny place, especially when half of it was windows? Once I got the keys, we measured the space again, and it was actually just a little over 78 ft.², but we never told anyone because 100 ft.² just sounded slightly less insane. Nathan came up with a few names that were a clever play on how small the space was, but Pygmy Hippo was my favorite, not only because it’s what we’d call our English bulldog, but because it’s a hilarious oxymoron, like ‘jumbo shrimp’ or ‘bitter sweet’. We wanted it to be curious and fun, like the stores and places that were special to us here, and a place didn’t need to be big to feel special.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We finished building the store at the end of November, and opened the doors just before Xmas on December 15th of 2010.
No one knew we existed outside of all the neighbors who watched us build the store every nite. Instagram was just a few months old and I realized that it was an easy way to share pictures. I of course had Facebook and Twitter, but they were not as clean and impactful as this brand new thing. It was the quickest and easiest way to show people fun and interesting items they’d never seen before, inside a strange and unusual space that we pitched as ‘The Worlds Smallest Gift Shop’.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Since we’re a gift shop always stocked for major holidays, one of the most important things was to throw parties for specific events to spread awareness, but the only problem I had was that the shop was so tiny, no more then 2 people could comfortably fit at a time. So when we decided to start hosting our events, we had to do everything outside in front of the shop!

We started with an annual DIY valentine party which also featured a giant moon for everyones photo op, and this evolved into a Halloween carnival that we designed and built together! That carnival practically took over the entire sidewalk, and we’d invite local ice cream trucks and cotton candy vendors to come out to all of our parties, and once the Pocky truck even came by to pass out treats. Even if it was just balloons or someone wearing a hippo costume, we quickly realized the power of having a cute commotion outside, where people would line up to buy stuff inside a teeny space. This commotion made every passerby curious, and every photo posted during the early days of Instagram crucial for people to know we excited.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pygmyhipposhoppe.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pygmyhipposhoppe/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/pygmy-hippo-shoppe-los-angeles